'Money never made me soft': Tony Ferguson attacks 'little b***h' Nate Diaz again for refusing to fight him

Ferguson and Diaz could have fought at UFC 213, but the latter turned it down.

UFC lightweight contender Tony Ferguson has blasted Nate Diaz once again for his refusal to fight him in an interim title fight.

Ferguson had previously called Diaz "a f*****g bad ex-girlfriend" for his refusal to fight anyone but Conor McGregor, which would ideally earn him the biggest pay day.

The Stockton native responded by claiming he never wanted a third fight with the Irishman before revealing that he was likely to turn down a fight with "El Cucuy" at UFC 213 on 9 July.

This prompted a frustrated Ferguson to attack Diaz once more, calling him out for wanting to rather take part in a triathlon than fight and improve his ranking.

"Little b***h. I don't know. I don't know what his problem is, dude," Ferguson said on The MMA Hour. "Like, I understand that you want to say like, 'McGregor, I'm not going to do your dirty work.' Dude, I don't want to go into name-calling, I don't have to do that, but I'm talking about if you're a fighter and you're in this organization and you say that you'd rather go and ride a bicycle, you've got better things to do, that's cute. That's real cute."

"I might as well Stockton Slap the s**t outta you. Really? I'm from the 808, man. I don't have to talk about where I'm from, but I'm tough. I'm a hell of a lot tougher than that dude, because money never made me soft.

"And s**t, even if it made me soft, I wouldn't forget where I came from. Because you know what? You've got a place to represent — like you said 'represent.' You've got a man right here that's calling you out, and you're not signing on the dotted line? You're a clown, dude. You're fake."

Diaz also claimed that McGregor and Ferguson — who both share the same manager in Audie Attar — were working in collusion to pressure him into fighting. Ferguson rubbished these claims by stating that he does not like McGregor either.

"He [Nate Diaz] smokes a lot of good weed, I guess, because he's got a lot of time on his hands just to do that," the number two contender explained. "The dude's delusional, man. Obviously I'm not in cahoots with McGregor. If you think that I am, then you're f*cking high as f*ck. Straight up, he's smoking that wacky tobacky, because I'm not. I don't like the dude (McGregor)."

"I don't like how, obviously, things are playing with my management, but you know what? I'm professional, so this is where we're at."

While Ferguson has not fought since his victory over former lightweight champion Rafael Dos Anjos in November 2016, Khabib Nurmagomedov — who was slated to fight him at UFC 209 — is still willing to fight him in an interim title fight.